Universe Sandbox ² Alpha 19 Preview

We’re still working hard to get Alpha 19 polished and ready to go. We hope to have it ready in the next few weeks.

Until then, you can read about what’s coming in Alpha 19 below and try out a preview version by manually opting in via Steam:

Right-click on the game title in your Steam Library

Click on ‘Properties’

Select the ‘Betas’ tab

Set the dropdown menu to ‘alpha19preview‘

Close the Properties window

Steam will now update Universe Sandbox ² to the preview version

Once updated, launch Universe Sandbox ²

1. Roche Limit & Tidal Heating

In this simulation, the Moon is orbiting Earth within the Roche limit and is being torn apart by tidal forces.

When a small celestial body approaches a larger body at a distance inside its Roche limit, it begins to stretch and disintegrate due to tidal forces. Essentially, the gravitational force acting on the closer side of the smaller body is stronger than the force acting on the far side. Outside of the Roche limit, these tidal forces are still present and can heat bodies in close orbits.

In Universe Sandbox ² Alpha 19, you can see these effects when a satellite tightly orbits its primary body, or when a star gets too close to a massive black hole, or even if two identically-sized bodies are in a close binary orbit. First, the secondary body will heat up, then if it’s close enough, it will begin to disintegrate and lose mass by producing a stream of particles. Often times these particles will begin orbiting and form a nice glowing ring around the primary body.

2. Models for Saturn V 3rd Stage, New Horizons probe, & Police Box

We’ve put in improved models for the third stage of the Saturn V rocket, which was used in multiple lunar missions, and the New Horizons probe, which has famously given us a closer look at Pluto. We’ve also added in another very important spacecraft, the police box. These new and improved models were made for Universe Sandbox ² by Toby Halter, who is continuing to make models for us. It’s not possible to pilot or control these spacecraft… but we’re talking about it.

To check these out, you can load up the following sims:
– Third Stage of the Apollo 12 in Orbit of Earth in 2003
– New Horizons Pluto Encounter in 2015

Or you can place them in any simulation: Add > Objects tab.

3. Improved Explosion Power

We’ve improved both the visuals and the simulated effects for the explosion power.

As you can see in the screenshot above, using Explode on a body will send out a “shock wave” which will affect surrounding bodies as well, causing a chain of destruction. Realistic destruction, of course.

4. Simulation Quality Setting

You can now adjust a Simulation Quality setting in Home>Settings>General tab. This will adjust the maximum number of attracting and non-attracting bodies, which in turn will affect the number of particles/fragments produced and how long they last. Set it to “Auto” to determine the best settings for your hardware.

In the future we hope to have this setting adjust dynamically with what is happening in the simulation, in order to constantly find the best balance between performance and simulation experience.

We still have some bugs to sort through and some polish to add, so hold tight. We’ll let everyone know once Alpha 19 is available.

The laser, which is already part of the VR mode, is still being integrated with the additional surface detail feature. We expect these features to be ready for Alpha 20.

Why does my exploded bodies not look like these in this post?
Mine just shrinks to a white ball that flies off in the the distance?
Also, can you share your game settings so that i can see if that is the problem as mine is all set to max.

The explode tool is not working properly in the last release, Alpha 18.2e. Are you running the Alpha 19 preview? You can follow the instructions at the top of the post to opt-in to the preview version.

I’m a little confused as to why you would add shock waves to the game, since in reality a ‘shock’ is only a transfer of energy through a medium; in space it is near vacuum and shock waves don’t really occur. It’s a cool concept and I’ve always held US^2 as doing the physics pretty well (like what we actually see in the real universe), but from a physical point a view this shock wave business doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. One of the first things I noticed in US^2 is that the supernovae animation carried a energy front a long with it, but that makes sense, however this new update not so much.

You’re correct, there shouldn’t be a typical shock wave, which is why we put it in quotes: it’s a “shock wave.” 🙂

From Thomas, our numerical physicist:
“It’s not a shock wave; more like a wavefront. The planet is exploded outwards, and what we have is essentially the planet mass expanding in a shell-like shape. This shape carries a density, which diminishes as the shell volume grows, and the effect on other planets is this cloud of material colliding with it, heating it, and ripping it apart.”

On that note I am very excited for the Roche lobe introduction, and perhaps even accretion disks?! It would be amazing if you guys could make the rings have physical properties besides gravitation, such as radiation of energy and self friction (causing the particles to heat up and thus radiate more). I’m sure you guys know about black body radiation; in the real world we see this happen and often time the disk of material can get so that the disk itself is observable in X-rays. You guys could make accreting objects! Which means in US^2 you could do Type Ia supernovae!!!! and accreting super massive black holes (SMBH’s)!!!! leading to quasars!!!!

As far as we know, issues with gravity in Alpha 19 have been isolated to certain versions of pirated Universe Sandbox ² copies. They shouldn’t exist in the official releases, which you can purchase on the Steam Store: http://store.steampowered.com/app/230290/